Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

DataMan62 t1_jd1y9z3 wrote

Thanks for this info! I didn’t know there was an eclipse coming up.

One occurred a few years ago in late August right around my mom’s birthday. The path went just south of my hometown, 300 miles south of Chicagoland. I was going to take my boys to see it and celebrate her birthday, but it was just after school started. When I heard how many people planned to got SIU to see a special presentation on the eclipse, I decided against pulling them out of school. Glad I did. Motels were booked. Several of their classmates went and were stuck on I-57 for hours coming back the next day.

I see this one is heading to the northeast from Mexico and Texas through Maine and Quebec instead of the southeast from Washington through St. Louis to the Carolinas. I think that’s due to the Earth’s tilt at that time of year. No?

I see it is going directly over my hometown and Indianapolis. Indy is going to be PACKED with Chicagoans. If I go, I’ll take 57 to my mom’s house and hope the traffic’s not too bad going down that way — and back.

7

lucky_ducker t1_jd2m9wp wrote

Word to the wise - don't plan on returning home the day of the eclipse. Get a place to stay the day before AND the day of the eclipse, and drive home the day after when the roads have cleared.

I saw the 2017 eclipse just east of Hopkinsville, KY. Afterwards the parkways were a parking lot, it took us three hours to go 30 miles to US 431. Cellular data was completely jammed so no luck using navigation apps - if you had pre-downloaded area maps, GPS might have worked, since GPS itself is passive. Gas stations at the parkway exits quickly ran out of gas - we finally found gas about ten miles north of Central City. The Ohio River bridges at Evansville and Louisville were backed up for hours; we slipped across the lesser-known bridge at Rockport on US 231 where there was no back-up.

I live and work in the Indianapolis area, and I will be advocating for the office to close at 2:00 pm that day to allow the staff to get home before the roads are clogged - the eclipse ends right around 3:15, so the afternoon commute will be virtually impossible.

12

SuperCell47 t1_jd2nqhh wrote

Bingo - driving back from Tennessee to Cleveland after the 2017 was horrific. Special thanks to Cincinnati for having road work going on all along every freeway!

5